One of the most disturbing things that have come from the realization that the US government has been scooping petabytes of data out of our web services was the notion that the tech companies offering these services were complicit. It looks now that not only was that information incorrect, but many major US tech companies have now joined together in requesting serious reform on US surveillance techniques.

When Edward Snowden dropped the biggest eye-opener of our generation regarding how the US government treated citizen data, it was more than a little upsetting. One of the assertions that was repeatedly made by Snowden, however, was that the big US tech companies were in on it. We were told that Microsoft, Google, Apple, and many others were opening back doors for the NSA to scoop out what they needed and be on their way. Each of these companies have insisted that this was not the case, and that they only provide information when they are legally obligated to do so.

When the real evidence was presented, it became clear that the NSA was tapping the external data lines from Google to capture and all you can eat stream of user data. These and other practices were immediately condemned by the companies who were involved, and since then Google in particular has worked hard to secure these once open points in their security. Now it looks like all of the big names in the US tech world have come together in order to reach out to Congress and the President on five critical points of surveillance reform in the US.

While Google has been approaching some specific points recently through their White House Petition, they now join AOL, LinkedIN, Yahoo!, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, and Twitter on a new approach. The five points found on the Reform Government Surveillance site are incredibly straightforward, and include transparency about government demands alongside mutual legal assistance treaty compliance, a limit on what can be collected, some kind of oversight, and respecting the free flow of information.

The open letter to Washington on the website links to powerful statements from Marissa Mayer, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page, and several others. The page includes basic sharing tools, putting the power in the hands of their users to spread the word and try and get the attention of Congress. Unfortunately, at this point the only real thing that can be done are things like this. The hope is that making noise will make it clear that change is needed, but seeing that Google hasn’t managed to get 2/3 of the signatures required to get their White House petition answered makes you wonder if there are enough people out there who understand that they should be concerned about what is going on.